


Deception

by FloraOne



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Comedy, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Honestly some of this is a bit silly, Usagi is canon levels of being a ridiculously oblivious idiot, but also they're cute together?, love square
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23414617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraOne/pseuds/FloraOne
Summary: What if Usagi and Mamoru had long been together when Usagi stumbled over a cat with a bandaid on her kitty forehead?Written for Beej88 in the UsaMamo Spring Exchange 2k20.
Relationships: Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi
Comments: 105
Kudos: 300





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beej88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beej88/gifts).



> So, here it is, my exchange fic, and I hope my giftee likes it most of all (and that I was successful in deceiving you, Beej ;) ) She wished for Love Square and Established Relationship with a side of Fluff, and while some of these seemed to contradict each other at first, I hope I came out succeeding to marry all of these themes! Anyway, have a comedy in three chapters! I hoped I managed something you will love, Beej! Mwah!
> 
> My always thanks to my lovely beta Uglygreenjacket, who also organized and hosts this exchange for us! Thank you so, so much love! And also, a broad, broad thank you to my friends! For writing parties, for keeping me sane while I'm going insane, for helping me brainstorm when I'm stuck, for being this little internet enclave while I'm going up the walls! This crisis is crazy for us all, and I could not be more grateful to have you, and honestly, that's includes all you people who always have such warm reviews for me, who interact with me on tumblr, and who root for me! I hope all of you enjoy this, and that it's a little distraction from this crazy, crazy world.
> 
> Either way, here's chapter 1!

* * *

Deception

Written For Beej88 in the Usamamo Spring Exchange 2k20

* * *

Tuxedo Mask did that low crouching thing again: the one where he landed with spread, bent knees on the balls of his feet, the tuxedo stretching across his infuriatingly attractive thighs. With no effort at all he folded himself up so outrageously elegantly, all long limbs and gorgeous, smirking lips directed at _her._

He moved like a dancer. Like a wet dream. He moved like those people who just _knew_ how to move their bodies in the most flattering way instinctively, like those people who felt at home in their skin, who stood tall with drawn back shoulders and confident movements. Those people you just couldn't help but glance after, those people you couldn't help but be attracted to when you saw them pass you by even if you tried to deny it really hard, even if you squeezed your eyes shut in order not to look.

Two beats in her chest and he'd untangled himself back to his way too perfect height, and Usagi tried not to swallow her lungs, even if it was perhaps a lost cause.

One beat more and he was by her side - too close, again, she could feel his cape flap against her leg, and looked straight at her, when he reached to his side.

One hammered beat of her heart more and he threw his cane in a wide arch across the street without looking.

She looked, though. Whipped her eyes from his and over to its trajectory, and it hit the youma straight in the nuts and pinned it via its ridiculous loin cloth against the neon lights that exploded in glass and blue electric sparks. All sounds drowned out by a high pitched howl through fangs and green lips, and the crystals previously aimed at Sailor Moon shattered against the ground in pretty, sparkling shards that reflected all the neon colors all around.

Wow.

And then her heart slipped into her panties because Tuxedo Mask's voice was at the shell of her ear and the fabrics covering his chest ever so slightly pressed against her back.

"Your turn, Sailor Moon," he purred at her, and his breath against her neck spread goosebumps along her skin.

She shuddered, stepped away, whirled her head around so hard her hair slapped against his legs, and glared. His lips only quirked up harder at one side.

She didn't look, either. At the youma, that is. Just raised a gloved hand to her tiara above her angrily puckered brows, yanked it off, and shot it blindly at the youma behind her.

Judging by the youma's instant howl and the bright light show reflected off the impressed expression on his face, she must have nailed it like a badass.

Tuxedo Mask blinked just as her tiara returned to her and she snatched it up blindly, plucking it straight from the air and shoving it back against her scowling face, and she'd never moved her glare away from him.

He looked so impressed it made her feel awfully smug, and she tried so hard not to show it.

And why was Luna never around when she _nailed_ this shit, man?

"Not bad," he complimented with an easy smile, all chin tilted down at her and simmering eyes, even if he still stood way too close.

She _told_ him she has a boyfriend, goddammit.

They had this weird, silent contest nowadays. Who was the most badass. Jumping off buildings and disappearing into thin air with their farewells, making impressive and over-the-top entrances (he kinda won at both of those), _crushing_ it with the youma-defeating (at least there, she was uncontested champion.)

And _damn,_ was he coming on strong. And every time she put him in his place, it seemed to only drive him to try harder, made him somehow even more gleeful at it. That smile was so infuriatingly _entertained_.

It was infuriating.

(It was also fucking hot. And she hated it. Because no. _Never_. She already had the perfect man at home, excuse you very much, Tuxedo Mask - a man who _also_ had amazing thighs, so there.)

And so Sailor Moon scowled harder, and thus ultimately, as wholly distracted as she was, the only indicator that something was wrong was via the change in Tuxedo Mask's face. The way his eyes flicked up in sudden shock and he threw himself in front of her in a flash like an idiot ready to defend her because that's what the guy did a lot.

How _many_ times did she have to flaunt the fact she was a _way_ stronger superhero than him to finally make him understand she wasn't the friggin damsel here?

But yeah, turns out the youma had a second youma with him. This one a bit quicker, unfortunately.

Her eyes flickered in confusion when it wasn't a youma after all, though, but that infuriating man in a grey uniform again. Flaring nostrils and blonde, slightly curly hair. He looked too young for that hateful snarl on his lips, the tense angry set of those eyebrows painting his face into rage.

It happened fast. Uniform-guy was glowing, floating even. Usagi barely had time to grab at her tiara again. One moment he pressed out a mirthless laugh, the next he sidestepped Tuxedo Mask, flicking him away with a forceful push of energy that flug him off as easily as a bothersome insect, and his hand curled around Sailor Moon's throat.

A terrified noise cut through the air and Usagi was surprised it wasn't her who'd made it. In the split second she had, the man's eyes glowed almost blue, maybe aqua, something turquoise, and his lips curled into a smile that made Sailor Moon's heart lurch into her stomach in that really, really bad way, this time.

Before he could squeeze, though, before he could so much as twitch his finger, Sailor Moon lowered her eyes into a scowl, curled her fingers into her tiara and pushed it at his chest. She fell from his grip into warm, careful arms as the force of Sailor Moon's attack flung him off of her and into the nearest wall, because excuse her but she _was_ a badass. He cried out in sharp pain with wide eyes and that dark glint, his grey uniform straining black and his glove red as he staggered to his feet.

Her heart beating in her throat, she tensed her fingers and the tiara spun again in the air, digging deeper.

His cry was sharp, his face a snarl.

"I'll come back for you, Sailor Moon," the man said, clutching his injured side and ignoring Tuxedo Mask as if he wasn't even there - like he always did, as if he was a foe absolutely beneath him - and the air shimmered with his slow-ish disappearing act. Her tiara clattered against the wall as it lost purchase.

Yet, before he'd disappeared completely, just a ghost of his form flickering in and out of visibility, not even a fraction of a second, he flung off a wave of energy at her and it propelled every last pebble and dust particle in the vicinity to be hurled in her direction with projectile speed.

She flung up her arms. Something grazed her cheek and she winced until nothing hit her, abruptly, because the thick, red lining of a cape was covering her head to toe and she was pressed against a warm body.

When the air had settled, she breathed deeply. Remained standing there for a moment, a bit shaken. That was close. He'd never come so close before.

"What a dick," Sailor Moon muttered under her breath, and the roll of her eyes in her voice seemed to have the power to make Tuxedo Mask untense.

With another flap, the cape (it was surprisingly soft!) slipped from her form.

She was about to make a joke, but when she could see Tuxedo Mask's face again, it was tense and concerned.

"Don't worry, I can totally take him," she said with a confident shrug, and finally, Tuxedo Mask's lips curled into some semblance of a smile.

"You got him good," he replied, and stepped up closer to her.

Sometimes Tuxedo Mask really, really seemed to forget personal space around her. It was a bit confusing, since he seemed the reserved type.

He had Serious Face, again. He had that whenever she was struck. Whenever she was, he'd tense and glue himself to her side.

And so, it wasn't unusual that the indicator that she was a bit injured were Tuxedo Mask's instant Serious Eyes on her face.

But it was nothing, she touched her gloved hand to it, and the pristine white was dusty, sure, but came away clean. No blood. Barely a scrape, surely. Didn't even hurt.

"Of course, I did," she said with a petulant glare as if he'd challenged her superhero-capabilities.

But he didn't take the verbal bait and instead his hands were on her face and tilting it as if he were allowed to, and she was too shocked and too affected by his proximity to say something.

"You're hurt," he said with a wince, and it was ridiculous, because she was sure it was barely anything.

"You should see the other guy," she tried to joke, and he didn't take up on it, once more.

His hands were gentle, careful, his eyes that concentrated single-minded inspection as he studied her none-wound in a way that she was very used to from someone else, because Tsukino Usagi was a klutz, (and let's face it, Sailor Moon was, too) and she did a lot of things that warranted this face. A lot of things that were _actually_ bad.

(Like that time she'd just moved in, ironed-on that handy fakey-tape-for-people-who-can't-sew onto the curtains completely naked as you do when it's summer and you just moved in with the Most Gorgeous Man On Earth Who'd Just Run Out To Get Them Breakfast, and promptly sat on the hot-iron. She still had a fading hot-iron-shaped scar on her butt and had never heard the end of it.. Either way, she's had worse than an itty bitty scrape just last week alone, when she kicked the couch accidently and banged up her toe so hard it came out green and purple.)

Still, her voice came out weird, and it was the reverent way he touched her, she knew it. "I'm fine," she rasped.

Her voice was too hoarse, Tuxedo Mask was too close, and he had exactly the right height, exactly the perfect warm, and when he stroked a gloved finger along her jaw his gaze shifted to hers and she couldn't hide the goosebumps and the attraction, and her heart jumped when he stroked a wisp of hair behind her hair.

"Please be careful," he whispered. It was kind of a beg.

Her eyes widened and she stepped out of his touch like lightning, pressed her lips together and glared and HATED the flutter in her chest.

"I have a—"

"Boyfriend," he finished, and the half smile was back. "Oh, I _know_."

And yet, with the wrinkle of her nose, his lips tilted up further, awfully sexy on one side of his mouth. Smiling like this was all some sort of joke she didn't get.

 _Never_ , she reminded herself, and glared. Never ever ever. Nuh-uh. Tuxedo Mask might be handsome, but she was taken, and happy, and perfectly content, and he could suck it, he would not phase her. At all. Ever. _Nuh-uh_. She was wholly unaffected. She _was_.

* * *

She tried to silently sneak into the apartment, but he was sitting right there, open balcony door, fluttering eyelash-lace curtains, windswept hair and calmly leafing through a book.

"So, how is she?" he said evenly, legs crossed one over the other so prettily, not looking up from his book as he turned a page and Usagi nearly jumped a mile into the air, startled.

"Huh?" Usagi squeaked stupidly because she was winded and bad at this and seriously, this sneaking out and lying and making excuses was by far the worst part of this whole secret superhero identity thing.

But Mamoru's eyes lifted from his book and he shot her that amused smile and shifted against Usagi's floral and rabbit cushions that he'd all wholeheartedly embraced when she'd moved in.

"Naru?" he reminded her so very helpfully.

Er, right.

Well, good thing she was a scatterbrain at the best of times and this was all pretty normal for her. She guessed. She _hoped_.

She felt her cheeks heat and cursed them silently. " Uh… um. Fine," she stammered, and walked into their shared living space with entirely too stilted movements, and cringed.

He watched her, lips tilting up on one side as his eyes roved over her incriminating legs and hips, then flew back to his book, smile playing around his mouth.

"And?" he prompted, not letting it go, and Usagi wracked her brain, blanching. What excuse exactly had she used this time?

He lifted one perfect arm to the back of the couch and it usually was his nonverbal invitation to come snuggle. Because Mamo-chan was too serious to outright demand snuggle, he was more sneaky than that, and usually she'd grin and tease him for it and be outrageously annoying and he'd roll his eyes and love it and snuggle her close, tease and all, but this time, again, she shifted her weight from side to side and stalled.

He'd feel her frantic heartbeat like this and might know she was lying and she couldn't risk it.

"And what?" she stalled some more.

If he noticed, he didn't show. Instead, he smirked, eyes twinkling, and her heart throbbed.

" _Did_ she eat her engagement ring?" he said, clear amusement tinging his words, and Usagi refrained from slapping her forehead, because goddamn was she bad at this.

"Um... um…"

He didn't let her off the hook. Instead, his eyes were downright entertained. "I didn't know they were engaged," he offered.

She swallowed and carried stilted legs to the open kitchenette and wrenched the fridge door open so hard that everything inside rattled. Someone outside was laughing very loud and it carried across the open balcony door.

"It's uh…" she said, yanking a bottle of milk tea from the fridge and hanging on to it, "uh...very new."

"Oh yeah?"

She untwisted the bottle cap and didn't turn, and her face was just so fucking hot and _ugh_.

She only spoke after downing half the bottle, and her voice was weird, and she faced the open fridge door as she spoke and begged the strawberries and leftover Coco Curry inside for moral support. "Uh, yeah. Yeah. He, uh, asked tonight! Yes. The ring was in the cake. That's why."

"Ah. I see," he said, and Usagi jumped, because suddenly, his voice came from directly behind her. She turned around and there he stood towering over her, this pretty, pretty man.

"That's a shame," he added.

But her brain was too slow on the uptake and he knew it was unfair when he did that. "Huh?"

Somewhere in the back of her head this was all a peculiar parallel. The way he got incredibly close, _just_ like Tuxedo Mask had before, and it was a little strange, that fluttering in her heart. She blamed her nerves for the spike in her veins. Because this was her guy and they'd been together like literally forever and he's had his dick in her a thousand times at least, but suddenly she was as shy and affected as she'd just been with Tuxedo Mask a few minutes ago and holy shit.

He studied her face, stroked his finger along the sensitive skin of her jaw, beneath her ear, where she'd been struck. With a frown at her scrape, he stroked a wisp of hair behind her ear - it should BARELY BE VISIBLE BY NOW UGH, and really, it was all startling déjà-vu.

It all got stuck in her throat and suddenly she remembered she ought to keep going, started to stutter, scrambling for something to explain that new addition to her face, but he interrupted her calmly.

"That his romantic proposal was ruined like that?"

He stroked the back of his fingers against her cheek, her jaw, her neck and followed them quite seriously with his eyes, and really, she was wholly unprepared, her arms flopping out to brace herself against the counter behind her and she almost dropped her milk tea. "Huh?"

"Umino. And Naru. The engagement," he said, the pad of his thumb running down her throat and she swore her heartbeat was hammering against him to greet him.

She was surprised she wasn't a blinking neon sign. 'I'm _lying_ to you, Mamo-chan', her pulse must scream at him in deepest, shameful regret. "Uh, uh, yeah. Yeah!"

His hand stroked her throat so gently. Emotion in his eyes she couldn't place, as his face darkened and his fingers turned even more tender, his look utterly preoccupied.

And then he leaned down, pressed the softest kiss against her jaw, then moved them slowly, one soft, tender, puckered kiss at a time, down her neck, and with his lips he chased away every last phantom memory of an evil general's hands around it laced around a spike of fear. Even though Mamo-chan couldn't even know she needed it, and she melted in his hands.

It all shot a little through her veins and ignited her. She was pretty sure she hadn't been that turned on in _ages_ , and absolutely blamed the thrill and the fright and the way Mamoru's fingers just knew how to touch her so well, and NOT Tuxedo Mask and _certainly_ not because—

"It's… it's a shame…"

"It is," he said, and lifted her, his warm, strong palms flat against her butt and digging deep and pressing her up against him, and the fridge rattled again loudly as he pushed her up against it and his tongue into her mouth.

She dropped her milk tea.

* * *

The day she'd become Sailor Moon had started like any other and it wrecked her mind that that was only 6 weeks ago because it felt kind of like a lifetime now.

Like most mornings, she'd woken up as Mamo-chan had the audacity to attempt to get up to get to class at godawful-early-o'clock and tried to disentangle himself from her death grip on him, and managed to convince him to five more minutes of good-morning snuggles that turned into twenty, so that he had to leave with his hair still wet from the shower and his breakfast in brown liquid and caffeinated to-go form from the vending machine at the station.

Every night she'd swear she'd get up with him the next morning to get an earlier start to the day and every morning she'd snuggle back into his vacated warm side of the bed, pull her trusty old comforter over her shoulders and sleep until the sun was so high that it blended her through the balcony door.

That morning, she'd gotten up, checked her phone in bed, got out only for jam toast that she then promptly carried back to bed and stroked the crumbs back from the sheets because Mamoru got testy about crumbs in bed, and she only _just_ got her pocky-in-bed rights back in dire negotiations, opened up her app and answered a few messages from clients for tomorrow's afternoon group (they wanted a specific Fujiya tour! Strawberry shortcakes all afternoon across Tokyo! Woot!)

Really, her life was kind of perfect. She fell asleep on the rise and fall of the most precious chest in the world every night, knew what it felt like to be looked at with pure and utter adoration even when she was being an absolute nutcase, and _kinda_ got to eat for a living, what could be better?

She loaded up a few new available dates and uploaded a few photos from her last tour, brushed her teeth and did her hair with little bows on top of her buns with a tiny, glittery pokeball in the middle of each, packed her camera bag, and locked the door behind her as she made her way to Toshima to meet a group of tourists at the new Pikachu Sweets Pokemon Café in Ikebukuro for the short tour.

On her way back, it all happened so crazy fast. One second she'd been pondering if she could restyle one of her overalls into a peko-chan look for the Fujiya tour, and the next her life had changed. One rescued cat from a bunch of mean kids later and before Mamo-chan ever came home from his Thursday study lab, she found herself hyperventilating with her face between scantily clad knees in an outfit that had _just appeared on her body out of magic ribbons_ as a _talking cat_ calmly explained she had a destiny.

By the time she got home later that night Mamo-chan was long in bed and she'd fought a monster at _Osa-P_ of all places and met Tuxedo Mask and freaked the fuck out and later sat on a beam of Tokyo Tower because she _could_ and asked Luna 20 questions until the nerves calmed down a _little_.

In between, there'd been a moment Usagi had almost been excited.

She'd just transformed into a _superhero_ and defeated a _monster_ and _what the hell_ and _god_ , she couldn't wait to show Mamo-chan.

"...Who's Mamo-chan?" Luna had asked in alarm as she hopped after Sailor Moon on a friggin _rooftop_ that she was _running on_ like it was _nothing,_ and Usagi had beamed down at her shiny new animal sidekick and maybe this had all made her a bit high, because she was kind of fluttering inside as this was all frankly way too weird. She felt like she was in a shojo manga, honestly.

"My boyfriend!" she'd answered dutifully and with a bright, proud lilt to her words, and her feline companion had hissed and arched her back like a proper cat, and it startled her and burst her excited bubble quite abruptly.

"Usagi!" Luna had snarled, stern. They'd stopped on top a building close to Juuban-dori and a neon sign flickered light against the adjourning walls of buildings. "You can't tell your boyfriend! Absolutely not!"

Sailor Moon drew up short. "What?"

Luna hopped up on the sign, its backside to them, and thus was closer to Usagi's - _Sailor Moon's_ (holy fuck!) - face. "You can't tell anyone!"

Usagi's face felt tight, her shoulders tensed, surely there could be an exception, Mamo-chan was the most trustworthy person on the planet, and really, this was non-negotiable, because how could she _hide_ something like this, and—

"Usagi," Luna said sternly, as if reading the turmoil in her face. "It would bring you and _everyone_ you love in grave danger if the enemy were to find out. You _can't_. Absolutely not."

Suddenly, her mind was back with the monster. Except this time, it wasn't _Naru's_ mom whose face had contorted into a monster's features, but her own Mama. It turned into a film in her head, until all her family were monsters, and Mamo-chan the helpless victim. She blanched.

"But…" she stammered, faltering. "He wouldn't tell anyone… I swear he wouldn't... "

Luna sharply shook her fur and it vibrated through her. "What if he refuses to leave you alone during attacks because he gets too worried?" Luna said with a bite to it. "What if he gets into the line of fire?"

Her heart dropped into her gut and she paled even further, because… because...

That was… very much a Mamo-chan thing to do, yes. Yes, it was.

The image in her head turned into its own little horror show. The monster's head twisting and twisting again in that 180° angle except this time the body it held was Mamo-chan's lifeless one and it sent ice through her veins.

"Oh god… Luna…" she gasped, searching her new cat's eyes. "How am I ever gonna hide this?!"

She primly sat on her front paws, they touched side by side as Luna sat up with a straight back and an air of authority that was kind of eerie in a cat but nevertheless there.

"You don't have to tell him _everything_ , do you?" Luna said.

Usagi sputtered. Started pacing on a random rooftop. "I tell him what I _eat_ everyday," she cried out. "I send him selfies and photos of cute things I spot during the day. I tell him what I dreamed about in the mornings and what I plan to do tomorrow in the evenings and when anything new and exciting happens which is _always_ and I text him like, a gazillion times per day. _He's gonna notice_. He can't not!"

But Luna was absolutely unimpressed. "You're gonna think of something," she said with an air of finality to it.

"I _live_ with him," Usagi tried to reason, tried to make her understand. "In a _one-room apartment_."

"It seems he isn't always home," Luna reasoned back with a calm, straight face.

"He's my _person_ ," Usagi lamented, how could Luna not see how futile this even was to attempt?! "I'll _marry_ this man!"

It was with her legs dangling from Tokyo Tower and her mind filled with outrageously outlandish new information and words like _youmas_ and _dark kingdom_ that they'd circled back to Usagi's problem at hand.

"Aren't you like, a tour guide? You're out regularly at odd hours!" Luna threw in as her newest suggestion.

"Gourmet Guide," Usagi corrected with a purse of her lips.

"That seems like a perfect cover. Can't you just say you're doing _that_?"

She shook her head, snorting, and then nearly fell off the beam when the lights turned off at what apparently was already the stroke of midnight and wasn't it just noon and she'd only _just_ simply saved an innocent cat?

"That's such a stupid excuse," Usagi mumbled thoughtfully.

"What, why?"

She scrunched up her nose. "He's invested! I tell him stuff! He joins me sometimes for bigger groups in the evenings! He interprets for me the few times I have an English-speaking group! He'd notice!"

"Well, then don't let him!" Luna reasoned. "Or tell him you forgot a group! Or you're testing new places!"

She pursed her lips and freaked out.

She'd _still_ been freaking out when she'd snuck home through the peculiarly open balcony door at 2am (Mamoru _never_ left the balcony door open…), almost fell over the couch in the dark, and crawled into bed and under warmed covers.

He grunted in his sleep and shot an arm around her immediately to pull her against him. He was warm and so was the bed, and his tank top that he wore to sleep had ridden up and his boxer briefs were soft cotton and his bedhead ridiculous and how could she ever be able to keep this from this man, _how?!_

His arms slung around her, trapping her between sinuous muscle, hard bicep and broad chest pretty much in reflex, and he felt like home and he shifted to tuck her securely beneath his chin even when he was practically asleep, or something like that, and her heart hammered in her chest.

"I had the strangest dream," he rumbled in his sleep and beneath her ear, his voice so heavy and low and sonorous with sleep it broke and vibrated in his chest.

"...yeah?" she squeaked, and curled a trembling hand into his shirt.

"Mhmm," he hummed against her, and turned a bit to nuzzle his face into her hair. She shifted like a puzzle piece that was made to fit him, and slowly started to relax. He was warm, the bed was warm, this was all going to be ok.

"Where were you?" he breathed, his eyes still closed, that voice still such a rumble, yet slightly more awake now, and his hands around her starting to stroke into her shirt, starting to gently glide against her spine.

His words were slurred and tired and conversational. They were curious and normal, half asleep and trusting, and it would be the first blatant lie that she would ever tell him which wasn't something along the lines of, 'I have no _idea_ where these crumbs came from!', and she suddenly felt too hot and like she couldn't do it.

"Naru!" she pressed out. Too fast. A bit too loud, and his eyelids fluttered into a frown, then pulled her closer.

"I was at… at Naru's," she croaked pitifully and her voice broke. "There was… something with her mom."

He grunted, barely awake, barely listening, and it turned into a distracted hum as unconsciousness was claiming him once more.

Her hands curled tightly into his shirt and she clung to him, and at least this first time it really had not been a lie, not really.

Only a few moments later and his breathing was deep and calm with the slow rise and fall of his chest and Usagi pressed her lips against his collarbone and kind of wanted to scream in frustration and also kind of wanted to wake up, because all of this had to be some sort of joke or at least a ridiculous dream.

But it wasn't. And the next morning, when she'd been woken by Mamo-chan moving around to get ready for class, and by his kisses on her shoulder and the junction of her neck (and her brow and her eyelids and cheekbones) as he left… when the door clicked shut behind him, and she'd moved to pull the comforter back over her head, Luna was sitting in the still open balcony door.

The comforter dropped to her lap and her heart jumped against her ribs as if it shoved her. Immediately, her eyes flew back to the door Mamo-chan had just left through.

Because it was all real and he'd just walked out into a world where monsters existed and she somehow had to keep him safe.

Somehow, she vowed, she'd manage. She'd keep him safe. _And_ she'd keep this a secret. Mamo-chan wouldn't figure it out. Somehow. Promise.

* * *

It had taken Mamoru exactly three days to figure it out.

The first time it happened was a bit like a fever dream, a lucid hallucination he afterwards wasn't quite sure had actually happened. Like a curtain that had dropped over his memories, made them fuzzy and hid them away.

He'd been out drinking after his study lab with a handful of co-eds - some of them went every Thursday almost as a tradition and once in a blue moon Mamoru tended to join them, because if he'd learned one thing from Tsukino Usagi in six years of relationship then it was to be a bit more social and to say yes to things once in a while.

He went home early, wasn't even all that tipsy, but afterwards not sure if he'd not overdone it and simply not noticed. It seemed the only explanation for the snippets of recollection that remained, a drunk dream.

And so, it happened that in the moment itself, it all flowed over him as if he wasn't in charge. When he keeled over all of a sudden on his way home, aching pain exploding in his chest, and he found himself tingling all over until he was wrapped in snug evening wear. Like a marionette, almost magnetically, it pulled him to a scene that could have been plucked straight from one of Usagi's shojo fantasy mangas that cluttered their every surface.

Yeah, honestly? He thought he'd dreamt it. There'd been no other explanation.

He didn't even really remember how he'd gotten home. The whole thing wrapped around his mind like a balmy film too ridiculous to be processed and was thus rejected as false.

He'd been _convinced_ it was an alcohol induced dream. It felt like one. It escaped his memory like one, fuzzy around the edges. Weird.

Next morning, a bit groggy, a bit hungover in a way he hadn't felt before, he'd hit snooze on his alarm, snuggled into Usagi's sleep-warm neck and got up late. On his way to class, he'd bought a double pack of vitamins instead of his usual coffee, and tried to glare his mind into some sort of recollection.

How _had_ he gotten home? _When_ had he gotten home? He really didn't remember drinking _that_ much. Nothing _nearly_ close to warrant a memory gap. He wouldn't. He knew his limits. Very well. He _hated_ nothing more than black-outs for quite obvious reasons, they freaked him out, triggered old trauma, and thus he avoided over-drinking not _only_ for that reason, but in part.

He'd spent his first class quite distracted and was mulling over what he might have eaten that might have interacted strangely with the alcohol, when the mystery was lifted in a way that felt kind of like he imagined a stroke to feel like.

The second time it happened to him, it snapped his memory into place. Like a rubber band snapping across his brain, the edges weren't fuzzy anymore, and he suddenly remembered last night _almost_ clearly. Osa-P. That pull. Sailor Moon. Monster.

The shock was so deep it knocked him over - or maybe it was the pull in his chest that threatened to consume him right there in front of the lecture hall on his way to his oncology class.

He made it barely outside the building, into the darkest corner between buildings in the setting sun, when he let go of his resistance with a gasp and became Tuxedo Mask again.

(And, besides, that settled it. Even if he felt the edges of his perception wobble again, he _must_ have been drunk. No _way_ would he come up with a name as stupid as _Tuxedo Mask_ , had he been sober.)

This time, though - this time he felt it clearly. Felt the raw, flayed edges of his mind trying to consume him, trying to forget this all even as it was happening. Like a filter across his mind, but this time, he fought it. Committed every single sensation to memory, as absurdly averse as it was. The sudden power in his muscles, the hum of energy he felt calling to him as if from the very Earth itself, the intensity of life around him almost like a siren song that pulled him in, made his every sensation heighten, overwhelming him and his very mind.

He could _feel_ things this way. The ground, the trees, the _people_. It beat onto his mind so sharp it stung like the biggest headache he'd ever felt, but he forced his mind to remain open.

And beneath it all, that thrum. That pull. Like a knot around his heart that had lasso-ed him captive and now drew him across town.

He remembered it from last night just barely. But he'd also felt it once before.

Never this powerful, never this visceral, this terrifyingly _urgent_ , but yes, a lighter version of this feeling he'd known intimately.

He'd felt it when he'd first met Usagi.

All those years ago, in front of Osa-P, too. Like something yanked at him. An invisible chord to bring him home. Had felt it again, months afterwards, when she'd first kissed him on that dare. Again, years after that, when he'd first felt her tremble and shake and come apart around him. He _knew_ that feeling. He'd joked over it for years, called it destiny, called it his red string of fate, and here it was again, out of nowhere.

Pulling him to Osa-P. Pulling him to _Sailor Moon_.

To the _wrong person_.

He stumbled after it gasping, running.

But, turns out, it hadn't been wrong. Not at all. She managed to fool him for exactly that one night.

He'd stumbled home frazzled, clawing against the urge in his mind to lose again what he had witnessed with bared teeth and desperate vehemence and he managed, managed to remember. It had gotten easier, and then effortless, over time, but that night it was as strong as the first night, and like a dream he tried to cling on to before it fled him, his breath was choking as he hurried home to tell her, hoping to trap it in the words.

He _wanted_ to tell her everything. He didn't know how, didn't know if he even had the ability to recall and then retell it in any way that made any sort of sense, but he knew he _had_ to.

Another thing that six years with the love of his life had taught him: he kinda sucked at communication, overall. But he was working on it, and steadily getting better at it, and this seemed, well… important.

But this time, when he broached the subject with his heartbeat frantic and confused, it was her who was freaking out even more. It hadn't made sense at the time, of course, it would only make sense later. Why she was evading the conversation as if she bit into it to keep the lid closed, as if its content was a bulging suitcase she was jumping up and down on with all her might to make it shut.

He didn't know that night that this time the tables had turned and for once in all the time they'd been together, it had been her who was hiding, and not him.

She'd been terribly jumpy when he entered their apartment, armed with choux cream from the conbini downstairs because Usagi had long drilled into him that one did not have Important Conversations without snacks.

"I… can we talk about last night?" he'd opened.

She'd _blanched_.

"Last night… was a bit strange and… I really…" he'd tried anyway.

She'd scurried right to him like a spooked little rabbit, eyes wide and panicked and flitting about.

"Something happened yesterday and today again and I really need to—"

Her eyes were blown up and her breath erratic and her hands were _quick_ , ripping at him, yanking, pulling, _mauling—_

He hadn't known the force she could _do_ that with.

"Usako!" he'd cried out, startled, scandalized, and dropped the bag with the choux cream, as her gorgeous, nimble little hands had undone his belt buckle and pushed into his pants in record speed, and she'd pressed him down onto their bed before he'd even finished uttering her name. Hopping on his thighs and pinning him flat, any word he would have spoken after that got swallowed by her tongue and it was altogether quite effective in distracting him.

It wasn't unwelcome, of course. Her touch was never unwelcome to him, and she had that uncanny ability to only take and give exactly as much as he ever needed. And that was exactly why this was, turns out, a tactic of distraction they would use often, henceforth. In one way or another.

It worked. It worked very well. After all, they were both people who sought comfort in touch in times of need, and these times were a bit needy. Confusing. Unsettling.

So really, he blamed his dick that he hadn't gotten it right there. That the spark of doubt might have bubbled up in his mind, but momentarily didn't fester. This weird coincidence, the way she'd not been where she would be at this time of day, wasn't wearing her pajamas, hadn't texted him in hours, the way the balcony door was wide open and her breath came too short. Yes, it had been weird, her behaviour. But he hadn't understood what was happening here. Had only gotten it the night afterwards, when the _next_ spark suddenly rattled it all into place, like a veil lifting from his eyes.

It wasn't even something she said. It was the way Sailor Moon - this woman he was so very peculiarly drawn to as intensely as the woman he loved - mid-fight and unconsciously, so very absentmindedly, flicked her hand through one golden streamer of hair in a motion he'd stared at a million times even long before he shared her bed.

He'd been so shocked that he'd stumbled and fallen and suddenly he _saw_.

Suddenly, every shriek and every crinkled nose and every sudden shift from terrified to determined was unmistakable and he felt like an idiot. No, he was never pulled towards anyone else. It was and always had to be her.

If he'd still had any doubt, when he unlocked the door later, and the balcony door was open again and Usagi was winded and her hair windswept and…

… and there was a tiny bruise around her bicep where the youma had grabbed her and flung her around.

He choked and found himself with careful fingertips brushing her arm without even remembering having said 'Hi,' or, 'I'm home'.

It threw him. Bombarded him.

 _Of course,_ it was her. She looked the fucking same. How had he not recognized his own girlfriend? How was she not recognizing him?

Who was doing this to her?

"Ah," she jumped, startled, his eyes and hands too intense on her arm. "That er… I was, um…" And suddenly her eyes were wider than his, fumbling for an excuse. _Again_.

Usagi had _never_ held anything back from him. Ever. She was the open book, the heart on the sleeve, the I'll-tell-you-all-my-secrets-for-a-smile.

Why was she hiding this from him?

He'd decided then and there to wait it out. See if she would figure it out, too. If she would tell him. What _else_ she would do to hide this.

And well, some of her excuses were _bizarre_.

* * *

There were a thousand-and-one-hundred things he adored about this woman. Like that endearingly irritated and so utterly self-annoyed little _snarl_ she made whenever she dropped something in movements so avoidable and so comical he tried _so_ hard not to laugh at (because, well, he liked to live.) Or that crinkle in her nose when she concentrated really hard, or the way she rolled her eyes at him when she found him 'prissy' and told him to get the stick out from his ass, or the way she licked the lids of her joghurt cups and never managed to not get something on her nose.

And then there were a thousand more things about her which he loved that she was so very good at, so much better at than him - like her uncanny ability to know exactly what to say to someone to comfort them, or exactly how to make someone feel at ease, and how she always remembered little details about anyone she ever gifted her attention to so very generously, so very bottomlessly. Things she excelled at and that he admired her for more than she was strictly aware of.

Lying wasn't one of them.

 _Damn,_ did she suck at lying.

Like the time they'd both _very_ obviously _heard_ the giant crash outside, and Usagi had _jumped_ up (from her comfortable perch with her head in his lap and her Nintendo Switch right in her face), yelped that Naru was sick, completely out of nowhere, not even _thinking_ of pretending to have received a text, and almost fell over her own feet trying to get up.

"What does she have?" he'd helpfully offered, almost cringing as he played along.

Her eyes had widened and she'd flushed beet-red and her eyes had flicked around in panic before settling on the paper he was reading of all things.

"Eh, eh—" she'd stuttered, eyes reading on his lap. And then she was cringing before she ever finished mumbling the word, almost defeated. "...Ebola."

He'd raised an eyebrow, perhaps a bit too slowly, then pointedly looked back down at the medical journal in his lap. Spread open, title upfront.

_Human Antibody Repertoire Following Ebola Virus Infection and rVSVΔG-ZEBOV-GP Vaccine: Assessing the Efficacy of Treatment and Establishing Immunity._

"Ah," he'd said, simply.

(Really, sometimes it was hard to keep a straight face.)

"Better get to her, then," he'd managed.

He'd given her the minutes of a head start and then jumped from their balcony to follow at a leisurely pace. (A youma in a _clock dimension_. Some of this shit was _weird_.)

Her excuses only got _worse_.

Like that one night they were sitting at the Hanamaru Udon branch closest to his campus because Usagi had picked him up and lamented her rather cute and serious condition of Overdramatic Starving, and one moment she was heartily slurping thickest noodles hung over Hanamaru Udon's signature black ceramic bowls on a plastic tray, the next she grew uneasy as if someone had stabbed her.

His chopsticks frozen in the air, he studied her intensely, watched her head whip around as she grew frantic, scrambling for an excuse.

"I, uh, I…" she stuttered, wide-eyed, starting to sweat, "uh my, my…"

Following her gaze he _saw_ the black cat in the window of the restaurant her eyes had landed on and widened. He rolled his eyes before the excuse ever left her tongue.

"My cat!" she yelped. And immediately cringed.

He whipped his eyes back to hers and glared, chopsticks still raised. That was the _worst_ one yet.

"Your cat," he deadpanned, as if he was saying ' _really_ , now?!'.

She shrunk on the sterile bench of the scarcely decorated chain restaurant, but scrambled for her bag. Eyes as if she was trapped. "It… it ran away."

"Usako," he sighed. "We don't have a cat."

Her eyes widened as if she hadn't thought of that and he sighed even harder.

"Uh, I mean, uh…" she scrambled, and her knuckles were clawed around the side of the little square table "Naru's cat!"

He let his hand drop into his hands and groaned under his breath before he caught himself and schooled his features. "Naru has a cat now?" he said nonchalantly as he lifted his head back up and his chopsticks back into his bowl.

Usagi, of course, was already in her jacket. She was leaving her _food_ behind. Half-eaten. _Usagi_. Double noodles and extra egg.

He went back to the restaurant after the absolutely _weird_ pet shop youma was defeated, got her another serving of her order to go, flew home, walked through the door like a normal person, and warmed it up for her and her melted, grateful 'I love you so much right now' eyes when she spotted the styrofoam bowl with the tell-tale flower logo.

Of course, when he'd entered, she'd sat on the couch and pretended to read a manga that was upside down with the balcony door once again open. He pretended not to notice.

Really, he was getting peculiarly used to the lamest of excuses. Like when, middle of the evening, lips moving underneath his and arching her back, a noise on the balcony once again seemed to alert her and she turned petrified under his fingertips.

He frowned, lifted himself up, dark grey jeans straddling her and open dress shirt flowing down to her, and threw her a look.

She wriggled out from underneath him, cotton panties and pink T-shirt and wearing nothing else with previous hope of soon wearing even less, and once again mumbled something about Naru.

He collapsed on the bed, his back bouncing off the mattress as he landed with a thud, and ran his hands through his hair before calmly finding her eyes.

She was eyeing his chest mournfully even as she crawled from their bed.

"What does she need?" His voice was a little defeated by now, playing along.

It jumpstarted her gaze to flit back around the room, both feet hitting the hardwood floor with the dullest little thuds, and she reached out.

"She uh," Usagi started, grabbed a random object, looked down at it and frowned. It was their alarm. "...needs an alarm."

Oh, for the love of god.

He raised his eyebrows. "She needs our alarm clock," he sighed. It wasn't even a question at this point.

Usagi almost comically hopped from leg to leg and stared holes into the little machine, as if she was telepathically willing it to become anything else. "Uh, yeah, uh, she accidently smashed hers."

He lifted himself back up and followed her out into the hallway.

"She smashed it."

Her squeak was high-pitched. "Uhuh?"

Really, he couldn't help the half-smile. Why was she _so bad_ at this? "And she can't use her phone?"

She froze in the genkan and her eyes widened comically. "...dropped it in the toilet," she tried to save herself.

"And Umino's phone?"

Really, that intense frown looked cute. "...both in the toilet," she declared with a nod.

"Ah," he said, leaning against the wall in the hallway, shirt still open, and she threw it another longing look when she opened the door.

"Anyway," she said to his chest, and he watched her step out of their apartment in just her panties and a T-shirt and their alarm clock in her hand, and he shook his head slowly as she closed the door without taking her eyes off his abs until the last possible moment.

Two days later, after browsing through Daiso on a Friday afternoon in search for new kitchen towels - because he was someone who insisted on replacing hygienic articles regularly at a budget and she agreed as long as they were cute - and they were leisurely strolling home hand in hand, armed with a set of baby blue towels with pink and black bunny faces not unlike the doodle she liked to draw next to her signature, he could pinpoint the second something had alerted her by just the way her hand twitched in his.

"What now?" he asked at the same time as she squeaked, "Uh, uh, Naru…"

Her flinch was so sheepish, her shoulders flew right to her ears.

"What of her?" he sighed, when Usagi was already stemming backwards, her hand slipping from his.

"Her uh…" her eyes flitted somewhere behind him, but this time he didn't look "... her cat is dying."

He _forced_ himself not to raise his eyebrow. "Didn't she just get it?"

Usagi eeked her 'Uh, yeah…' in way she did so often now, walked backwards and he followed her a few paces, hands shoving into his pants and towels tucked underneath his arm in a little Daiso bag.

"And it's dying," he repeated.

Her hand flew to her head and she would have run into a pedestrian behind her, walking backwards like so, wouldn't Mamoru have quickened his step in one broad movement, grabbed her arm, and pushed her a little to the right.

"It's, uh, an old cat!" Usagi pressed out, high and interspersed with nervous laughter, "She uh, bought it in a retirement home." Wide-eyes growing wider, and then, "Uh, a retirement home for cats, of course. Old cats. You know?"

His lip quirked up, he couldn't help it. "Ah."

"Yeah, um." She quickened her step again, wiggled away from him.

But Mamoru was a dick, really, he was, and pressed a little more.

"What's it dying of?" he asked when she'd already turned to run off to secretly save the city.

She turned back around with her shoulders so tense he almost felt sorry.

"Huh?" came her meekest noise so far.

"Her cat," he prompted.

"Oh," she squeaked. Growing even tenser, eyes wide and trapped and really, he should just let her go.

But he waited. Watched her eyes turn wider and more nervous and gosh, he had to teach his girl how to lie. She was starting to sweat.

"Uh, uh…" she stuttered, frantic now, and like she sometimes did when she got incredibly nervous (like when she'd introduced him to her father, all those years ago, or the entire week before her high school graduation exams, or _now_ ,) she started to hiccup.

"Uh, uh…" A little hic, blown up eyes, and then a stab of inspiration, so clearly visible. (He was standing too closely again, really. This made her nervous, he knew that.)

"Hiccups!" Usagi practically yelled at his face, and a passerby gave her a look.

He couldn't. He lifted his hand and only so barely kept from outright facepalming. "Hiccups," he repeated, incredulous.

She hicced again. "Y-yeah," she said, and started walking back again, almost into a pole." "It's, uh," another hic, "really bad. Naru's worried."

"Yeah," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Better go help her cat, then," he said, and as if he'd dismissed her, she was dashing off, still hiccing, waving at him over her shoulder.

Sometimes, it was ridiculous. Sometimes it was _enough_. Sometimes, he was _exasperated_.

Of course, he wondered if he shouldn't tell her already. He wondered that all the time. There were moments where he was ready to throw it all overboard and fuck it - when she was injured, when she slipped out in the middle of the night and he woke up to the pain in his chest in an empty bed and panicked he might arrive wherever she'd snuck out to too late.

But then he'd find her where she'd left him and she would behave weird with terrible excuse after terrible excuse, and he felt he needed to see _why_ and not force it out of her.

And so his mind was playing a constant ping pong. Tell her, don't tell her. Amusement, panic, exasperation, they all lay so close together at this point. _And_ it was going on so long by now, almost four weeks! It was kind of getting weirder and weirder he hadn't told her.

But sometimes? When it was all going smoothly, not a hair on her head in danger because she was so surprisingly _spectacular_ at this, at being Sailor Moon, with her too sexy legs in that dizzyingly short skirt and that badass attitude and yes, sometimes he was so proud of her he could burst? Damn, was it also so very secretly thrilling. A bit. A tiny, tiny bit.

Whenever it didn't give him a heart attack, that is.

Really, it was a sordid kind of game. And he was getting impatient.

It was probably wrong, his next tactic. But, nobody could fault him for flirting with his own girl, could they? So, what if she didn't know it was him. Maybe she'd get it somewhere along the road. He was laying the clues out thick, either way, in and out of the mask.

All she had to do was see them.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! Thank you so much for the reviews! I see you and I read every single review (mostly several times) and I LOVE YOU SO HARD FOR THEM! Obviously even more especially right now, since you're literally my social interaction here right now and I am GOBBLING IT UP! Thank you so so much for your support! I'm so HAPPY you find this story funny!
> 
> Anyway. Obviously, I'm ESPECIALLY happy Beej is liking it, and I hope you'll like this chapter, too!
> 
> Thank you to my lovely, lovely beta and our exchange host, Uglygreenjacket, and to Antigone2 for encouraging me so much and helping me sort my thoughts, but also like, all my fandom friends! You're my support system right now, friends! Thank you for this fandom and your willingness to spend your time for me when I need you most!

* * *

Deception  
Chapter 2

* * *

Of course, Usagi hadn't _always_ known Mamoru was the best man in the history of ever and always and forever. No, for a while there, she'd been convinced he was the second worst person in the world.

She hadn't known that either when she kissed him, a few weeks shy of age 15, and jump-started their relationship simply because she would always rise to a dare.

No, she'd had no clue. She'd thrown test papers and shoes and crane game prizes at the man, and he'd called her unladylike in the same breath that he ate the food she'd thrown at him. He'd made fun of her crush on Motoki and she'd laughed in his face when she caught him writing pre-prepared, neat and bullet-pointed notes before placing an important phone call. They got in each other's face and they riled each other up and it was some sort of dance that very soon became practiced, automatic second nature.

It was infuriating and infuriating to everyone around them (the Fuhuratas, her classmates, Mamoru's friend Asanuma, Shingo, you name it.) And so long before either of them had stuck their heads out of denial, their exasperated surroundings had many a time groaned at them to finally fucking be a couple, and she liked to throw fits over it whenever it happened.

'Your girlfriend is upset', someone had called to him just last week, when she'd cried a river over dropped Cremia. These were things he'd barely reacted to anymore. Mamoru-baka and Odango Atama were well known in these parts of little Juuban-dori. Sometimes, he blew her kisses just to be an asshole when someone said something of the sort.

To this day, she had no clue what changed the day she finally put her tongue in his mouth. What made her do it. Maybe it was the fact that Naru and Umino had just gotten together and she felt a little left out, or maybe it was the fact she was in a competitive mood because someone had beaten her high score in the Sailor V game, or maybe because the day had sucked and her test score too and her homework load was a giant pile of untouched and waiting for her once she dragged her ass back home, and it wasn't even that late in the afternoon and she'd already screamed at him two times that day - she did run into him an eerie amount. But, all in all, really, it had been an interaction not at all out of the ordinary, just another day in the Mamoru-baka-and-Odango-Atama saga, it could have been any of them.

Maybe it had just been long overdue.

And so, when she kicked the game in frustration, shoved off to stalk to the counter for a milkshake, it was no surprise he was already sitting in _her_ seat, his chin in his palm and one ridiculously sculpted eyebrow raised and it had driven her all wild.

"Has the mean game been mean to you, again, Odango Atama?" he purred.

"Have you not had enough for one day?" she collapsed in her seat with a glare.

"Oh, but I so love it when we go for Round 3," he said with a smirk, but turned back to his book, because the guy was weird and thought a busy arcade was just the _best_ place to study for one's high school graduation exams. "Maybe you should take it as a sign and do something important instead. Like, your homework."

These were the days she still rolled her eyes _so_ hard. "Oh, bite me," she'd said, and of course she knew he'd take the bait.

"If you insist," he'd said with a chuckle and a wink, eyes flicking up from his book just to mock her even as the waitress - non-Furuhata, that day! Both of which would bemoan the fact for years to come! - wordlessly placed a milkshake in front of her.

For years afterwards, she'd still thought she'd always gotten them on the house for being such a regular patron. It was only a few years ago that Motoki had let slip in conversation in a way that suggested he didn't think she wouldn't know, that even back then it was always Mamoru who had ordered and paid for them for her.

But she didn't know that back then.

"You're such a jerk," she'd mumbled as she pulled the frothy, beautiful milkshake glass to impatient lips.

"So you keep saying," he'd said with a shrug and highlighted something in his book.

"Sometimes I just want to shut you up," she said, followed by a long suction sound of thick, creamy milkshake through thin, striped paper straw.

"Contrary to what you might believe, I'm actually a rather quiet person," he answered almost absently, highlighting another line.

"Can I please be witness to this?" she begged. "Please."

His smile ghosted across his lips and his eyes and were a bit too cocky, but he didn't look up from his book, even when she was studying him so shamelessly, stool swivelled 90 degrees towards him.

"You'd miss me before the day is out," he announced to page 421.

"Oh, you wish," she scoffed.

He shrugged. "Who else would save your shoes from such careless misplacement?"

Another line highlighted.

"You know, being nice would do you good in life," she retorted dryly.

Finally, he looked up at her. "I assure you I'm plenty nice, Odango."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste, and stabbed the whipped cream that had sunken halfway down her milkshake glass with her straw. "Oh yeah? Because I have concerns about that."

He downright grinned, the ass.

She'd glared at him and leaned a little closer, because that was _obviously_ the right move when one claimed to get rid of someone. "C'mon. There must be ways for me to shut you up."

"You could try throwing nikuman again. That worked," he grinned.

"Briefly," she shrugged. "But I'm hoping for something to get you and those hideous clothes out of my face for good."

He chuckled, tilted his chin at her with those eyes that were too… too… Ugh. "Wanna talk me out of them again, yeah?" he smirked.

Her glare was thrown _so_ fucking hard, and he had the gall to pucker his lips to throw her one of those mock air kisses, and she kind of wanted to punch him.

But it also made her eyes widen in sudden realisation. "Kiss!"

It didn't make sense, of course, and he shouldn't have known what she was saying there, and yet he did, and he snorted. "You'd never kiss me."

"Why," she asked, her whole body swivelled toward him, her hands on her stool as if ready to propel her forward. "do you finally agree that you're revolting?"

He smiled. That sexy, small one with the eyebrow, the one she'd so much later in their life drop her panties for oh so willingly.

"Hm," he'd said in that cocky voice when he was too sure of his success. "You wouldn't be able to take it, Odango."

She rolled her eyes and threw him a look, the arrogant bastard. "You're so conceited," she threw in for good measure.

He shrugged, smirked, leaned towards her.

She froze for a second, because… because… because it felt like he was leaning in and she'd been more talk than anything, really.

But he didn't. Not really. He did it not to kiss her, only to mock her. And she hated the way it made her heart pound in fierce regret.

But what he said was kinda worse.

"Go ahead then," he smirked at her, full challenge, daring her. His face so very close, as if he held it out to her on a silver platter, his eyes twinkling with all the 'you wouldn't do it. No _way_ you'd do this.'

He even puckered his lips again in another air kiss, the asshole. His eyes were _laughing_.

Her glare must have withered her face, permanently sketched some lines in it. "What, you don't think I would?" she bit out.

He snorted. Retracted his face back away from hers. " _Never_ ," he said with a laugh. "You'd sooner—"

Usagi _plunged_ in, rigid, determined fingers clawing at his lapels and pulling him down by his ugly green jacket and almost off his stool, and with his shock barely having time to register on his face before it was on hers, she flew from her own stool and up to her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his.

It was her first kiss and he was clearly not responding until suddenly he _was_. Until suddenly, he shifted and warm hands pressed against her hips and pulled her closer and between his legs on that silly stool. Until suddenly, his lips moved against hers, careful and trembling and brushing oh so smoothly, and he just kept _going_. Going and going and going, and his face tilted to the side and his warm palm moved to press against her jaw and her cheek and her neck, and when she hummed and coaxed his lips open with her own, it didn't cause any protest at all.

Way, way later, Mamoru would say that if she hadn't done that, if she hadn't kissed him like this on that day, it would have taken them years to get together. That this kiss was what had short-circuited his brain and turned it to some sort of relative enlightened pudding (because he would always be an asshole and playfully use her words against her). He would confess only so much later how he hadn't slept that night at all and had felt her kiss on his lips like a phantom imprint on his skin as he glared at his ceiling instead and re-evaluated everything he had ever said to her.

Without that kiss, he liked to say, they still would have gotten together one day anyway, he was sure of it; he liked to say she was inevitable for him, after all. But that without that kiss, he wouldn't have understood it so soon, so shockingly, so very, very suddenly.

Before, he'd always been so derisive. So cocky and self-assured and saying things that couldn't have been flirts, they _couldn't,_ yet turned out they kinda were.

But after that kiss, he'd behaved downright peculiar. Absolutely, completely, grotesquely _weird._

He didn't insult her anymore. He didn't smirk at her. He called her _Usagi_. There was that one time two weeks after 'the incident', when he'd stepped into the automatic doors of Crown, froze right upon passing the threshold once he'd spotted her, blinked… and then simply _turned back around and left._

Only in hindsight she'd understood that afterwards he'd simply been _shy_.

It would still be a little while away until she could read him like a book, and at this point in time, he'd been the most confusing mystery. A mystery that suddenly behaved politely around her and buried his hands in the pockets of his pants. _New_ pants. Pants that were suddenly _not_ the atrocious kind anymore that she'd called out for almost a year of knowing him and making fun of his wardrobe, among other things. Pants that had obviously been bought to look good, to flatter and impress.

He'd been flustered _mess_ and she just hadn't _known_.

It was when she'd sat on one of the stone boulders at the edge of little Kimi-chan square waiting for Naru to get out from cram school, noisily slurping the last remnants of her strawberry milk from a juice box she'd bought at Seven Eleven around the corner, that she watched Mamoru across the street repeatedly turn into the road that would eventually lead to her home, turn back around and walk down the street he lived instead, only to change his mind and change directions once again.

He did that at least three times before she called out, and she was _confused_.

"Baka!" she finally shouted across the road.

He'd _jumped_ at her voice. Turned around as if in slow-motion, with wide eyes as if he'd been caught at something mortifyingly embarrassing. His gaze held hers for a peculiar while, as if debating, before he eventually jogged across the road and stopped a distance away from her, his hands shoved back into his peculiarly well-chosen pants.

"What are you getting so worked up about?" she asked, completely nonchalantly, her heart wasn't beating a mile a minute, no, no, not at all.

His eyes flashed and he looked back towards her crossing.

"Nothing," he mumbled. And then he glared, shook his head, and spoke again. "Are you…" he started, swallowed. Hands out of his pockets, brushing against the sides of his pants, and back in. "...Are you gonna be at… at Crown tomorrow?"

She frowned. "Probably, yes."

He threw her a look. "No. No, I meant..." he grunted, visibly frustrated, and rubbed a hand over his face. "I meant are you… would you… Ugh—"

But he broke off again with a groan. "Why am I so bad at this?" he grunted into his hands, barely audible.

And her heart had dropped right into her shoes.

Because…"Wait," she'd shot out wide-eyed. " _Wait_."

Yes, what _had_ him so worked up. She'd been so _terribly_ shocked to find out it had been HER.

"Are you asking me out?!" she'd shrieked.

His flush had been _adorable_. "What if I am?" he'd mumbled.

She'd flushed, too, blinking, and he'd misread it, because of course he did.

"Right," he'd snapped, snapping back. "Forget it. I didn—"

"Ok!" she'd shouted at him.

He'd been as shocked as she was apparently.

He did take her out, then. The following weekend, he picked her up at home at 11am to the dot, when her father was at work and her mother was grinning a bit too much, and he took her to 'their' park, to Arisugawa-No-Miya Park, and rowed her in a boat. It was cheesy and adorable and _embarrassing_ and they didn't quite know what to say to each other for the longest, awkward while until Usagi said something stupid, he made fun of her for it, she glared and punched him, and he kissed her.

She'd gone to bed that night thinking her heart might explode from all that rumbling in it, and when she saw him again she took his hand and kind of never let it go.

She'd been surprised, really, at the level of unwavering commitment this stoic, prissy, nerdy, perfect man hid under that quiet, careful exterior. The way he loved without fear and reservation, even when it made her so nervous in their first years when he just wouldn't ever use his words to tell her so.

And while he apparently and so very silently had decided she was destiny, she'd been insecure sometimes, about this. Way more insecure than him, in hindsight. Worried he'd turn around and finally understand that there were women out there better matched to him. Older, more sophisticated, less ridiculous women.

But when, one day, about one and a half years into their relationship, when they were out with her friends picnicking at the botanical garden that he just happened to know that gardener at, and she later found him in that giant, pretty greenhouse talking to this silly, lovely man with these ridiculously many children, and he… _said_ these things… her heart was suddenly calm and for the longest while had never worried again. When that kind man with the army of children and that happy laugh had told her Mamo-chan that there was nothing more important than family, and she'd frozen where she stood with sudden panic for her love, because oh no, don't say this to my Mamo-chan, he doesn't HAVE any family… and yet instead Mamoru had smiled, small and shy-if-you-knew-what-to-look-for and _nodded_? And then later _blushed?_ Blushed so hard and so red and _nodded_ when the gardener asked whether Mamoru already had someone he wanted to be his family… Usagi had never doubted him again.

And she did get him to use those words, little by little. Later.

And so, she moved in with him the second she had graduated, by which time he was joking about red strings of fate and off-handedly saying things like 'this would look good at our wedding'.

And really, it should have all been a fairytale, their love story, if she now wasn't keeping things from him. Important things. Terrifying things. Confusing things. And suddenly, once again, she was worried if there wasn't someone out there who was better for him. Who didn't lie to him. Who didn't endanger him. Who didn't blush at the way too smooth lines and way too blue eyes of fucking Tuxedo Mask and his fucking pretty thighs like a floozy.

Godfucking _damn._

* * *

So, turns out, superheroing was scary, terrifying, _time-consuming_ stuff.

Right now, she should have been at a turbo fancy sushi restaurant with a group of tourists from Hokkaido, and meeting up with Mamo-chan afterwards. Instead, she was sprinting away with her heart in her bladder from a bunch of scary looking slime minions - which just grew again when they were cut in friggin half by her - on a fucking cruise ship because space restriction was _just_ the thing she needed right now, and a youma who could control _water_ of all things to top it all off, because this just couldn't get any better.

 _Why_. Why _her_?! Why couldn't Luna just find like, anybody else to do this job? Ugh.

One of the slime monsters struck her foot and she fell, except at the last possible moment, she could grab the railing of the ship.

With a loud, shrill scream on her part, she lunged herself upwards and away—

And immediately hit a hard, warm chest.

"Eeeeek!" she screeched, and grabbed on to hard bicep and trinkety fabric.

One thing was for certain; as irritating as he was, he was also terribly useful. That guy really, really, _really_ had her back.

"Sorryyyy," she yelped just as he let himself drop straight down to the hull of the ship and skillfully away from a bunch of slime monsters. It kinda felt like when a particularly mean rollercoaster plunged you down a 90 degree fall.

Completely out of reflex, she kind of grabbed at him like a monkey and screamed, and he flexed his gloved hands around her to hold her a little tighter.

"Oh, _never_ hesitate to jump into my arms," the douche said with a wink at her, when he landed absolutely elegantly with spread knees and Sailor Moon in his arms as if it was friggin nothing.

It really didn't help at all that Tuxedo Mask seemed to be hellbent to flirt her right out of that fuku for some reason. Or that he was _good_ at that, the smooth fucker.

It was _infuriating_.

And also, by now, absolute routine. She barely sent him a glare anymore, simply leapt from his arms and moved into a fighting stance, because the slime monsters were back.

"Ready for another round?" she shouted at him against the roar of the waves crashing in on them.

But he was standing right behind her, much closer than she'd thought, his voice that flirty, low rumble.

"Ah, you know I'd do _all_ the rounds with you," he purred, and moved into a stance absolutely mirroring hers.

She blinked. Almost missed the next opening because that was… that was something so _Mamoru-baka_ to say and Tuxedo Mask did this _often_ , and when she whipped her eyes to the side to throw him an incredulous look, his eyes were full of expectation.

What a weird, weird coincidence.

Also, those coincidences kinda kept collecting.

Like two days later, when stupid Jadeite came with his bi-weekly entourage once more, and Usagi simply had enough.

"Of course, he'd pick the most gorgeous person as his target," Tuxedo Mask sing-songed in her ear in lieu of a greeting when he lifted her out of the broken remnants of a theater stage on the outskirts of Motoazabu.

With narrowed eyes, she walked up the destroyed planks with his assistance. "Are you calling yourself gorgeous?"

"No," he rolled his eyes. "He was targeting _you_ , you adorable idiot."

She whipped her head around to throw him a glare and promptly fell into the next hole.

She squeaked and fell on her ass and Tuxedo Mask's annoyed face over the hole really didn't help her mood.

"One day I really wish you'd watch where you're going," he said with a proffered hand she absolutely ignored.

"How would you know I don't?" she glared, when she lifted herself out on her own. "You don't even know me."

Tuxedo Mask knelt on one knee beside the ruptured woodwork she was crawling out of when he said the most scandalous thing yet.

"I know everything about you, Odango Atama."

Sailor Moon stumbled a bit in her step and would have almost fallen again if this way-too-amused and way-too-gleeful utter jerk didn't catch her arm, and she gaped at him furiously because.. Because…

… Odango Atama?!

He smirked, turned to her - so _close_ , so weirdly _expectant_ \- squeezed one of her hair buns, and _winked_ and…

That was _Mamo-chan's_ pet name, how _dare_ he?

"Don't call me that!" she screeched and his face fell as if he'd expected something else.

But the back of the stage exploded out with the screeches of the youma because well, they still had a job to do, and she ran after it.

"You love it when I call you that," he mumbled and she whipped her head back around.

"Only my boyfriend gets to call me that!" she yelled behind her and charged at the youma, but not before she caught his absolutely misplaced 'Duh'-face.

Other times, Tuxedo Mask really was weirdly, intuitively astute about her. Almost uncannily so.

"I bet you're really boring in everyday life," she'd said after the FM No.10 thing, legs dangling from the rooftop of the Radio Station because it was way after Midnight and Mamo-chan would be asleep anyway, and Luna had told her to find out more about Tuxedo Mask because she thought he might be an enemy, and so she lingered.

He snorted, and scooted the littlest bit closer as he gazed down at her with that infuriatingly amused smile - and she was pretty sure he wasn't even aware he was doing it.

"What makes you think that?"

"You flirt like someone who sorts their books alphabetically," she judged, because he did. She knew his type. He _was_ her type…

Though she'd deny that, of course. Her _only_ type was Mamo-chan.

He chuckled. "I _do_ do that."

"See?" she said proudly and with a little jut of her chin in the direction of the stars - and away from him. "I get your type. I bet _you_ can't tell how _I_ sort my books."

"By color," he shot out, directly. "Though you don't have so many."

She shot her gaze at him, shocked, and the jerk just smirked. "Mostly romances. Some cute guide books," he guessed at her, tilting himself in that way again. It was a little like gravitating, really. "And then there's the shojo manga. That's one's a vast collection."

She gaped at him, then closed her mouth with a snap.

"Nope," she lied after a while, and her face heated awfully even as she got up. "Got me totally wrong."

She blushed even harder when, looking back at him after a distance, he still sat there with that same amused smile, watching her go.

She pressed her lips together and frowned. Because nope. Nope, nope, nope. Never.

She was still pressing her lips together when she'd detransformed somewhere near their apartment building, grumbling, and Luna padded out from like, _somewhere_.

"Tonight went well, I think!" she exclaimed happily in her nasal little voice. "You're getting better and better, Usagi-chan!"

But Usagi kept frowning at the illuminated asphalt, deep in thought and irritated, following the shadows of the street lamps with her frowny face as she walked.

"Why do you think he keeps flirting with me?" she almost growled at the street, lost in thought.

Luna's face whipped to hers in confusion and Usagi's face to hers.

It was then that her face probably dissolved in 'Oh no'-face.

"Oh no, Luna!" Usagi yelped, horrified, and stopped in front of darkened Honululu Coffee.

It must have been alarming, because Luna jumped a little. "What?"

Her hands flew to her cheeks. "What if he's into me?"

And with that Luna kind of collapsed, and threw her the dirtiest, most annoyed, most ' _duh'_ look she would have thought a cat capable of, and groaned.

But that was no good, because—

"Luna," Usagi said more vehemently, more direly. "I think Tuxedo Mask is _into_ me? OH NO?!"

With a long sigh, Luna hopped onto the narrow staircase of the residential building she was passing and tilted her head at her charge through the orange metal bars.

"Usagi-chan," she announced with All The Scold in her voice, "you have more important things to worry about than Tuxedo Mask."

But Usagi really wasn't listening. Instead she started walking way too fast, way too agitated, and Luna couldn't help but hop after her.

"I'm not into Tuxedo Mask!" Usagi lamented, a bit too loudly for like, 2am. "I'm only into Mamo-chan!"

"Like finding the other Senshi," Luna continued, a little louder.

"He's not gonna get between Mamo-chan and me! Never!"

A long kitty sigh. "Or the princess and the crystal."

"Mamo-chan and I are destiny you know?!"

Luna's sigh was more of a groan as she padded behind her. "Actually, your destiny is finding and protecting the princess. And the Crystal."

Usagi glared petulantly, as if she could glare right at her culprit, didn't slow down as she smashed her key into the door of their apartment complex. "I'd never betray my Mamo-chan! Ouch!"

And then she missed, hit her knuckles against the door, and shook the pain out, before she tried again.

Luna shook her head, mumbling, and just left her behind. Usagi couldn't take her up to their apartment anyway.

* * *

"You're into me," Sailor Moon glared at him the next time she was in his arms. Which, honestly, happened a bit too often, really.

"I am," he said, smiling, but it was that mocking one, that 'gee, what _ever_ tipped you off,' one.

She punched one of the zombie-like horde-people who was making grabby hands for her throat in the solar plexus, sidestepped, and continued her conversation. "You know I'm in a committed relationship," she grunted.

"I very much do, yes," he said from somewhere behind her with a chuckle in his voice, and _GuH_ why was this always so amusing to him?!

She whirled around and glared.

And he threw her a fucking _air kiss_ , the jerk.

She whirled back, and hurled her tiara up in front of the crowd. "You obviously don't know what it's like to be committed," she screeched just as the youma howled and dissolved.

Tuxedo Mask looked on with an impressed shrug and loosened his stance, and all the mind-controlled people dropped at once.

"What makes you think I don't?" Tuxedo Mask asked with that obnoxious little half smile, turning to her.

She stemmed her hands in her hips just as the first people started groaning, energy obviously returning. "Do you?" she challenged, suppressing the urge to go up on her tiptoes like she would when Mamo-chan was being this obnoxious.

"I do, yes," Tuxedo Mask said easily.

And it threw her completely off guard. Why would he… We did he… What?!

"... do you have someone?" she asked. Incredulously, shocked.

"I do," he smirked at her.

 _What_?!

Her face must have been flabbergasted surprise. What an _asshole_. What a _playboy_. Hadn't he just said he was into her? Was this a sort of joke to him? Or was this his idea of committed? What the _hell_?!

"How long?" she shot out, mustering him up and down, her face reeking of shock.

"6 years," he said with a small, private smile and too eager eyes.

She recoiled, then narrowed her eyes, fingers digging into her own hips, and more people roused that they completely ignored.

"Tell me about her," she said as in a challenge, as though he must be lying.

His lip turned up into a quick grin before he schooled them again, and he turned to leave. "Are you assuming the gender of my partner now?"

"Them," she corrected with pursed, tense lips, and followed him. The House of Fortune turned out to be just an empty storehouse without dark magic, and the street upfront was already turning blue with sirens, but they went out the other way.

"She's gorgeous," he said, and she rolled her eyes, both for the gorgeous and the gender-assuming when she'd been _right_.

"Of course, she is," she scoffed.

For some reason, that grin just flitted back across his mouth. "She's got the most infectious smile and the most disarming pout."

Sailor Moon frowned, even as he hopped the dead-end low wall, and reached his hand out to her to assist her. She didn't take it, simply hopped after him, and he smiled even wider.

"She's unconventional," he simply continued, now under the light of a street lamp, "and passionate. Wears her emotions out for everyone to see, absolutely unapologetically."

And then he stepped up towards her a little, looking down at her, and she studiously _ignored_ the flip in her belly. "She's got the biggest heart in the world."

And then he came too close, again, and two gloved fingers brushed along the strands of her hair that blew against his tuxedo in the wind. "She has the most peculiar hairstyle," he said to it, smiling.

She glared, but didn't step back. Instead, she raised an eyebrow. "More peculiar than mine?" she asked.

He smirked, shrugged one shoulder too attractively, grinning too much. "I'd say about the same."

Her frown almost hurt it was so tense, but she finally took a small step back, and promptly stumbled a bit over something behind her. Stupid curb, stupid heeled boots.

"Terribly clumsy," he continued with a small smile to her feet, as he reached out to steady her, almost endearingly so.

And then his hand moved to her chin, a gloved finger running along her jaw and she cursed the shiver it caused to spark along her skin.

She swatted his hand away.

His lips twitched in amusement. "Surprisingly powerful, especially lately."

Finally the penny dropped. _Wait_. Her jaw unhinged and she almost sputtered. "Wait, you're describing ME!" she shouted at him.

His grin turned wider, almost triumphant, and he stepped back up to her, even closer now, his chest now almost touching hers. "A bit oblivious," he said with the smirkiest smirk yet, tilting his head down at her.

She gaped. The _gall_ of this man!

"Tuxedo Mask, I TOLD YOU I HAVE A BOYFRIEND," she hissed, and pushed at his chest.

He groaned. Face to the sky. Exasperated.

She folded her arms tightly. "This isn't very feminist of you, let me tell you! To keep hitting on a woman who says she's not interested in you!" she scolded.

He sighed, as if he witnessed a great loss, or the way Mamo-chan did when she didn't get something. "Yup," he said with a small, defeated smile. "You're very right. Proud of you for that."

 _Huh_?

In answer, his smile turned a little softer, a little regretful. And then he tipped his hat at her and left.

"Hey!" she turned to call after him. "Does that mean you'll stop?"

But he'd vanished.

She growled after him.

But he did stop. For about a week and two days. Then they had a mind-controlling ghost bride youma to deal with and an army of her enslaved grooms.

"Hm. Nope," Tuxedo Mask said when he ducked out from under the veiled youma's grasp. "Sorry. Already gonna marry _her_ ," he joked, thumbs to Sailor Moon.

Who stomped her foot, enraged. "NO, HE'S NOT," she yelped to no one.

"Hm," he grunted at the youma, still trying to fight her off with his cane. "She'll be so deliciously mad at me once she gets I'm right."

"You're not even my type!" Usagi screeched just as he'd gotten away.

He landed _exactly_ in front of her, smirking down at her.

"Oh, I'm _exactly_ your type."

She felt _everything_ in her body flush at that look, and herself falter into silence.

She was terrible. She was so, so, so terrible. She didn't deserve to even look at Mamo-chan anymore.

And that hadn't even been the worst.

There was that time when he caught her as she fell from the beams of Tokyo Tower, and that little hushed, comforting, sincere, "I got you," rushed right down into her core.

"You don't," she'd grumbled, and made it even worse. Because when he turned to her with a small smile and put her so very modestly back on her feet, and said, "Oh, _believe me_ , I got you," and then disappeared with a wink?

That stayed with her. She dreamed about that. She dreamed about that while in Mamo-chan's arms, and when she woke up, she kind of wanted to scream, and to pay penance.

But penance never came. It only got worse. Like her mind spontaneously replaying Tuxedo Mask's words when Mamoru whispered into her ear in the same husky tone.

"Hm, you can't escape my charm," Tuxedo Mask had purred one night after one of the longest fights, when they were exhausted and his filter had seemingly like, vanished, if it ever had been there.

"You wish," she'd scoffed.

"You don't. You'll share my bed forever," he'd said with a tired, cocky grin to her appalled face.

"In your dreams," she'd defended herself and her too hot cheeks.

"Hmmm," he'd hummed in adieu, "Always."

And she remembered it. To her deepest shame, that very night, Mamoru whispering in her ear in bed, the most scandalous things he'd ever said to her in bed, and she thought of that. And flushed. Terribly. Terribly, terribly, terribly.

She was happy. She was blissfully happy with Mamo-chan. She would _never_. But it didn't help to know that in like… a parallel universe where she wasn't already with the most perfect man in the world? … she'd have jumped that man and his ridiculously shapely butt and his ridiculously, appallingly smooth Mamo-chan lines on some random rooftop on Day Three.

And then she choked, hard man on her and hot tongue against her throat, because in her mind, the thing she'd imagined Mamoru saying, groaning, moaning under his breath had been, "See? I told you, you're in my bed. Forever."

Even when it couldn't be.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go! I'll see you soon with the last chapter, and I hope you like this! Reviews are love and keep me sane!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An here you go, the last chapter! Thank you to Uglygreenjacket, my lovely beta and also the host of this exchange! AND thank you so much to everyone who is reviewing this story! I'm so happy it's making you laugh / throw furniture repeatedly / distract you a little in this madness! Thank you to sticking with me! It means the world.
> 
> Again, most of all, I hope you enjoy the ending too, Beej! I did my best trying to write a comedy for you, and I hope the conclusion doesn't fail you!

* * *

Deception  
Chapter 3

* * *

How oblivious could she _be_ , for god's sake? Mamoru was starting to increasingly, _maddeningly_ lose his mind, and the roots of his hair remained in a serious state of abuse for all the pulling at it he partook in.

He'd tried _everything_. Ran Mamoru-baka's book front to back and back again - in ways that should be _very well known to her_ \- and she didn't get it. Maybe she didn't _want_ to get it.

Instead, in the previous weeks, apart from having encountered and being miraculously cured of ebola among other ridiculous things, Naru had apparently also accidently boarded a wrong Shinkansen in the middle of the night and needed picking up by his very much non-driving girlfriend, had no clean clothes because her washing machine mysteriously exploded and was thus in dire need of Usagi's (none of which Usagi took with her when running out), suspected her apartment building was haunted and needed Usagi's opinion, and also someone stole all her shoes.

Weeks and weeks and weeks of this, of running out of sushi belt restaurants and leaving him alone with a full tray of the new springtime sakura themed special limited edition Starbucks drinks to be sampled that she always made such a fuss over every year and he despised, of jumping out of running showers and their warmed bed, and of stuttering so hard and so flushed he was worried she might get an aneurysm before this was out.

But despite all this idiocy, his girl was an absolute _badass_. He was so proud of her, he could _burst_. He had no idea HOW she always knew to find the enemy at every ploy, but… just friggin kicking the door in and stomping infuriated into a radio studio at FM No. 10 as they recorded that fake 'Midnight Zero' he hadn't even heard of? She was utterly, stupidly, recklessly insane sometimes, but also, he'd never found his girlfriend hotter. (And he found her plenty hot already.)

His girlfriend who wasn't recognizing her own boyfriend and yet she still reacted to him. He could _see_ that. All her tells were there. From the spotted flushing on her chest to the way she fixated on his bloody thighs of all things. It had been years since she looked at _him_ with such, like, _maximum_ thirst. Not since they were teenagers who'd waited forever to finally do it and then had to sneak around to accomplish the task. He was pretty sure it was irrational to be a bit jealous of yourself, but here they were, he guessed.

 _Odango Atama._ Tuxedo Mask called her _Odango Atama_ , and she _didn't get it_.

He'd been so thrown, that for a second there, he'd doubted his sanity. Asked himself if _he_ was wrong, and Sailor Moon wasn't Usagi after all. Which was nonsense. Of course this was Usagi.

Usagi who was currently tucked under his arm and wearing his rather ancient green jacket because 'spring' meant 'spring clothes' to her - whether or not the weather forecast permitted it - and she of course got cold. Usagi who tapped on her phone giddily as she filmed the inside of the tiny, historic tram as it passed rows and rows of blooming cherry trees, as if she didn't have videos of this from approximately a hundred times of having done this in previous years.

Tokyo Sakura tram, Tokyo's last nostalgic streetcar on the Toden Arakawa line, was tiny and crammed full and absolutely overcrowded during Hanami. It was definitely not the only way to get to cherry-tree-filled Asukayama Park and the nearby waterfalls tucked away smack in the center of bustling Tokyo, but it was Usagi's absolute favorite way of transport by a far, far margin, and so that's what they did. A blue picnic blanket wedged into a tote bag with their bentos and cans of alcohol pops between his knees, on their way to a sunset Hanami picnic with the Furuhatas and their significant others.

He sighed so hard when the crash came. How did the Dark Kingdom _always_ interrupt their dates so unerringly?

And yet, when Usagi's startled eyes met his and the ruckus in the absolutely packed streetcar began - a group of elementary schoolers with their yellow hats and leather school bags started whimpering, a tiny, bowed, silver-haired oba-chan and a tall, colorful drag queen bending down immediately to calm them, a salaryman screeching louder and shriller than any school girl he'd ever heard - and her eyes immediately roamed around the place how to get away from him. And succeeded. She was simply so much _quicker_.

When the door at the front of the car opened to the street to the sound of a tinny siren, she physically _pushed_ at him so they'd get separated, and he rolled his eyes so hard.

Of course, lone man on a panicking tram, he got herded in _behind_ the wailing kids, and by the time he heard Sailor Moon outside and scolding a youma he had yet to see, the chaos was complete.

_Don't get hit before I'm there. Don't get hit before I'm there. Don't get—_

She didn't get hit. The tram did, though. He lost his balance, grabbed on to the overhead handrails out of reflex and covered his head to drown out the deafening noise of sudden screams as he bowed over the kids to shield them as the streetcar bowed under attack and got gifted a new roof window.

He didn't even have time to blink before Usagi was back.

Well, Sailor Moon.

So, well, yes, of course she was trying to herd out _everyone_. But the way her eyes were unsteady and panicked only until her eyes found his calm ones, the way she catapulted herself to his side and grabbed at him, shielded him, the way her trembling had stopped and her orders grew more calm, more logical, it was very, very obvious this woman was here to save her boyfriend.

He couldn't help the small smile.

And sure, the safest thing here for everyone involved would have been to play dumb - the whole back portion of this tiny, tiny train had just seen him with his giddy, happy, Odango-ed girlfriend tucked under his arm who was very hard to miss in a crowd, and now the same guy was being singled out by one equally Odango-ed superheroine after the former had so conveniently just vanished into thin air.

He really, really should have. But also, maybe, _maybe_ this was his chance for her to _finally_ get it.

And so he let himself get launched out of a wrecked streetcar bridal style by his super hero girlfriend, froze only for one second, slung his arms around her slender shoulders to hold on, and then brushed his thumb against her neck into the wisps of baby hairs underneath the part in her hair where she was sensitive, and stroked.

She almost fell.

But he needed to bring out the armory, too.

"Not that I'm complaining to be in such gorgeous care," he purred against the side of her face as she made for one of the emptier side streets, "but I thought the threshold thing was _my_ job."

Sailor Moon's face _whipped_ to his - shocked and scandalized and as if he'd just told her he liked to eat kittens for breakfast with a spoon, and he curled his lips into the exact smirk that used to get her to flush the brightest back in the days of Mamoru-baka and Odango Atama.

"If that's the way you want to try it, though, I'm all open for experimenting, of course," he tacked on.

She _dropped_ him.

He shrieked as he fell, but thankfully she'd already been landing anyway, and so he didn't fall that far, but rubbed his tailbone in discomfort.

"Hey!" he yelped anyway, and looked back up, and…

Well. No. What a stupid, stupid idea this had been.

Usagi didn't get it. Not at all. And she'd also _never_ , in all their years together and whatever he had done, looked at him with such undiluted _rage_.

He flinched.

Nope. Not at all. And now, because he was an idiot, his girlfriend - who was Already Very Jealous In General - thought he flirted with scantily clad superheroines for funsies.

Well, shit.

In fact, when she stormed off in a huff back towards the hustle, darted behind a pair of vending machines which she'd obviously deemed appropriate enough cover because it lit up in pink flashes immediately that he wanted to facepalm at because there were PEOPLE HERE goddammit, and stormed back out as Usagi, he kind of felt like running for the hills.

"CHIBA MAMORU, YOU'RE IN A COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP, GODDAMMIT!" she yelled, storming at him, his jacket flying around her, and he ducked for cover even when her index finger was already poking right into that sensitive area just below his sternum.

"I am, yes," he croaked, and started to sweat. "Very much."

With every word, he took a step backwards. Back to the main street, back to where people were and thus less opportunity for murder.

Her face was redder than he'd ever seen it as she gulped for air to scream some more, poking at his chest. He held his arms up.

"WHY the HELL WOULD YOU FLIRT THIS _SHAMELESSLY_ WITH SAILOR MOON WHEN YOU— _WHEN YOU_ —"

Well, obviously, he would have liked to point out that she was arguing with him about things she couldn't possibly know if she, well, weren't Sailor Moon, and really, he was about to do just that, but then he bumped backwards into a person.

The _best_ person, it turned out.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I—Oh! Hi!" had come the surprised voice behind him, and before he'd even turned to look who it was, assigned the familiar voice to the familiar face, his lips had morphed back into glee upon watching all the color _drain_ from Usagi's face.

Grabbing Usagi's hand under all the 'No no no no no' in her eyes and her dragging feet, he whirled around with his most charming smile.

"Why hello, Naru-chan!"

He grinned perhaps a bit too hard. Especially considering there were sirens all around and shouting people and a trainwreck down the street, and Naru was clutching her own picnic bag in frazzled confusion.

Usagi's hands immediately curled around one of his, pulling desperately to get him away. "Ehehe, Mamo-chan, I'm sure Naru is like, totally busy, we should—" she babbled at the same time that Naru was gasping at them, "Did you see that?! Are you guys o—"

But he interrupted both of them with what must have been an almost maniacal smirk.

"Congratulations on your engagement!" he announced. "I hope that ebola scare didn't ruin the celebrations. Or the dramatic destruction of your washing machine. Do you need help getting the place fixed up or have you got it handled?"

He could _hear_ Usagi's desperate facepalm, the pained groan, while Naru's brow flew into utter puzzlement. "Uh… what?"

But he was on a roll, and looked down at her feet pointedly, smirking. "I see you got new shoes. How is your new old cat doing with her deadly hiccups?"

"Wait, _what_?" Naru shook her head at him.

By that point Usagi was all the 'uwahhh' he'd ever seen, absolutely freaking out, waving her hands as she jumped between Naru and him with outstretched arms, and yes, he was terrible, but he also had _way_ too much fun, and—

And then another booming crash, billowing and shooting rubble and he yanked Usagi to his chest as it blew out, this time from the little miniature mountain cablecar that went up the side of the hill up to Asakayama Park that went up in flames and Usagi _flinched_ as the youma appeared up on the summit.

 _Wait_.

Had Usagi _not_ defeated the Youma before she'd got him out of that streetcar?!

More screams, a loud howl.

Apparently not.

She flew into the air and from his hold like she did back in the day when someone had announced she'd forgotten an important test for the upcoming day, yelped something along the lines of "Best go your separate ways and never talk to each other again, ok?!" to both him and Naru, and skidded back behind those vending machines. More pink light show.

He groaned in purest, fiercest exasperation.

Again, it took him a while to join her. He needed to get Naru somewhere semi-safe and then at least _try_ to lose her inconspicuously, unlike _other_ people, and by the time he'd scaled up the natural rock this hillside park was mounted on, people were running from it screaming, and Sailor Moon was aiming her Moon Tiara Action at that Youma.

It exploded into stardust before his dress shoes ever touched the ground.

"Well, that went easier than I'd expected," he remarked right behind Sailor Moon.

When her eyes whirled around to him, prettiest hair slapping him, the last thing he expected was for her to burst out into tears.

Maybe he should have expected that.

Widening eyes, he took the last three steps towards her and grasped her shoulders, bending down to her.

"Hey," he hushed. "Everything's ok!"

"NOTHING'S OK!" she wailed so loud he flinched, and she hiccuped, and he bundled her up and hopped on a tree, on a gazebo, another tree, and onto the rooftop of the little paper museum in the middle of the park.

A bit helpless like he always still was when faced with her tears, he pushed his gloved hands against her hair and stroked in the way he did when she was upset to calm her. But yeah, wrong persona, and her arms shot out and she shoved him away.

"What—" What's wrong, he started to say, but she misunderstood and interrupted.

"Because I have a BOYFRIEND and he just found out I LIED, and oh god," she blanched, started pacing. "What am I gonna do?! What if he hates me now? What if he LEAVES ME?! WHAT AM I GONNA—"

 _Oh_.

He scrambled to her, gloves to her cheeks, caught a tear, and her wide blue eyes shimmered as she hicced and looked up at him in pure, heartbreaking desperation, and he flinched, because, well… that didn't go very well at all, his stupid plan.

"He would never leave you," he promised with a smile.

And with that, she burst into fresh tears. But it was the normal amount now. The 'I dropped the ice cream'-amount, the 'I'll never get my deadline done'-amount, the amount he could deal with.

"He hates me!" she wailed.

"He doesn't hate you," he snorted, stroking her face, hair, all the Mamoru comfort moves.

"He'll leave me."

"I won't."

"HE WILL!" she lamented, cemented in thick, crocodile Usagi-tears.

"Usako," he sighed, shaking his head.

But she hicced on and started to babble, curling her gloved fingers into his tuxedo. "I lied to him and he won't forgive me and now he will never bring me new Udon again and warm them up for me when I run out on him, and he'll never—"

"Usako," he repeated, a little louder, a little more exasperated.

"—bring snacks again for important conversations, and he'll never make sure I don't accidentally run into poles and people again, and he'll—"

He sighed. "Usako!" Sterner now.

And finally. _Finally_ , it registered.

Her eyes flew up to him the same way they had done when Mamoru had flirted with Sailor Moon back there. Utter, pure appallment.

" _Wait_ ," she screeched, yanked at his shirt. " _WAIT_!"

And then she punched him in the arm.

"Ow!" he yelped.

"MAMO-CHAN!" she screeched in complete accusation.

But ah, gosh, did this feel good. He couldn't keep it in, the grin, and it made her even more furious.

"UGH, YOU KNEW ALL THIS TIME?!" she yelped.

He shrugged, stepped a little close. It was officially allowed now after all, _finally_.

" _Wait_ ," she glowered at him in rage, and he took a careful step back after all. "YOU DID THAT WITH NARU ON PURPOSE!"

It was the most unwise thing ever to snort right now, but that's what he did.

"Her _cat_ was dying of _hiccups_ , Usako, _really_?" He giggled. He wouldn't even regret it. It bubbled out, and Usagi _growled_.

"You can't lie to save your life, Usako," he grinned down at her stupidly.

She glowered at him in a way she hadn't since before they got together. Since Mamoru-baka, and it made him preen just that little bit.

He pushed a wisp of hair behind her ear, chuckling mirthfully. "And, and…the _alarm clock_ , I swear, I…"

She swatted his hand away. "This was amusing to you!" she accused, all puffed up and red and _adorable_ and—

He shrugged again. "A little."

Her mouth locked into the most perfect, big, accusing 'o', before it morphed into the next, surprised appallment, like a lightbulb switching on somewhere in her head.

"Hey, _wait_!" She shot back up on her toes, her finger to his chest. "That means… that means…" Her face twisted into offended disbelief. "Every time I was lying to you... you were _lying to me too?!"_

He cringed, and really, this time he earned the next punch to his arm.

"Mamo- _chaaan!_ " she whined in rage to his 'What?!'-face.

"WHY ARE YOU SO GOOD AT LYING, MAMO-CHAN?!"

His arms _flew_ up in defence."If you'll look back, I didn't even HAVE to lie," he offered, immediately. "I just kept my mouth shut and pretended nothing was up! You never asked!" he defended.

She narrowed her eyes at him anyway.

"Which is," he continued against his better judgement, "by the way, a much better strategy for lying. Instead of telling me Naru has ebola."

Really, her glare was _precious_ , and this time, he chuckled. "While I was _reading a study about ebola._ Do you even _know_ what happens to people with ebola?"

She grumbled, the cutest, best pout, and he took a risk and kissed it.

"We're gonna practice lying, Usako."

And well, at least she didn't bite him.

She was still glowering, way later, when she was tucked back under his arm, and they were on their way home, until she apparently remembered she was really, really hot for Tuxedo Mask.

And so, it was only in the middle of the night that he frowned and thought to ask, "So, why _didn't_ you tell me?"

Moonlight flooding their one-room-apartment, she flopped around to him, rustling the sheets, pursed her lips and paused, throwing him an overtly reluctant look.

"...a cat told me I can't."

He threw her a glare. "Usako."

"I SWEAR this one is true."

* * *

Needless to say, of course they were gonna work together. None of that 'we might be enemies' thing. Pfft.

Really, had she never listened to that cat and talked to him right away, _that_ particular worry should have never come up. He was hers. Of course they were a team. They'd always been.

There was a Demon 6 o'clock Bus to check out and a weird crystal seminar Luna had found, anyway. But first, an embassy ball.

"Let's find that princess, shall we?" Tuxedo Mask smiled down at her in her pretty dress for the fancy masquerade ball that the disguise pen had bestowed upon her.

She really, really was gorgeous.

"If you fall in love with her, I'll punch you," she glared back up at him.

He chuckled. As if.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go! I hope you enjoyed! Reviews are love! Now and in 10 years! I love to hear from you, it's way more than half the fun of writing fanfic!
> 
> Also, please, everyone, stay healthy and well! Mwah!

**Author's Note:**

> See you very soon! Hope you liked! Reviews are love and also BALM TO MY ROUGHLY-HANDLED SOUL PLEASE FEED ME ;)


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